Imperioli, Michael

Michael Imperioli won an Emmy Award for his starring role as Christopher Moltisanti in the acclaimed TV series The Sopranos. He also wrote five episodes of the show; was co-screenwriter of the film Summer of Sam, and contributed to the short story anthology The Nicotine Chronicles. He is also the co-author, with Sopranos co-star Steve Schirripa, of Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos. Additionally, Imperioli is a singer and guitarist in the band ZOPA. The Perfume Burned His Eyes (Akashic Books), his debut novel, begins in 1976. Matthew is a 16-year-old boy living in Jackson Heights, Queens. After losing his two most important male role models – his father and grandfather – his mother use her inheritance to uproot Matthew and herself to a posh apartment building in Manhattan. “The city” is an entirely new and strange world for Matthew. But he soon befriends Lou Reed, who lives in the same building and eventually becomes an unorthodox father figure for him. The novel is written from the point of view of Matthew at age 18, two years after the story begins, and concludes in 2013, three days after Lou Reed’s death, with Matthew in his fifties.